19/5/09 Venice

I got up and hid the keys and we made out way to the bus. I didn’t sleep much of the ride. We had no problems at the airport, I even got a good muffin.

I slept the whole way, other than Mary waking me up to show me mountains. She didn’t sleep at all.

We took the bus in from the airport, nothing of note on the way really, and then started walking to Rialto, which was luckily one of the two places well labeled. We walked for part of the way with a girl we met that lives three floors below me at Marylebone. We struggled for a while to get there but it wasn’t a disaster.

The guys at the hostel were really nice and they upgraded our room to have a bathroom in the room, saving us about 15 Euros. Our room is huge and pretty nice, you can tell its from the 1500s or so but the bathroom is very clean and large, plus we have a great location right off Rialto Bridge, a problem that is common in Venice of being too far away.

We went out for a walk just wandering and stopped to get gelato. It was cheap and among the best I had. I picked coconut, hazelnut, and pistachio. We ended up in San Marco Square with the huge church from the 1300s. We went to get in but Mary’s skirt was too short so they wouldn’t let us in. Pretty funny. On the outside they have the Four Tetrarchs, which I learned about in art history, on the same level as the street, pretty cool.

Around the corner is the Bridge of Sighs which is under some sort of work so it’s like the Bridge of Advertisements now. Big letdown. But being by the water was really nice.

We started to walk over to the Accademia, which is a famous gallery that has the Leonardo of the dude with his arms and legs outstretched. Mary bought a few water colors and we stopped in a little square by the water and ate, I had a marghrita pizza, which was ok.

The museum was ok, many old paintings of Venice where you can see that it hasn’t changed at all. But I’ve seen a ton of stuff like that lately, so I was sorta bored. Plus they didn’t have the Leonardo out on display anywhere. Lame.

Mary wasn’t feeling so good so we stopped for coffee along the water. I had a coffee with whipped cream and she had a coffee with chocolate. Both were good and great views.

We wandered around, stopping in an old church but had to leave when Mary started cracking up. We ended up getting lost before making our way back to the hostel for a little, changing because it was so hot and we were both really sticky. I like the chilly London weather more.

We went down to Rialto and along the Grand Canal we ate dinner, I had a four cheese pizza while Mary had a mushroom pizza (I ate half). This was really good pizza.

We were going to study but ended up just walking the streets at night, very pretty. We stopped for some ice cream this even cheaper than the last. I had five flavors (chocolate, cream, cherry, yogurt and fruit, and tiramisu) for 4 Euros. A steal. Again we came to San Marco’s and went by the water and sat with our feet over the side in front of the gondolas over by the Bridge of Sighs. I can’t believe I’m really here I kept thinking.

We walked back relatively early. There were babies crying (the buildings are all close together) and no air conditioning, but it didn’t really bother us.